Position: Lecturer
Study area: Humanities and Social Sciences
Location: Gippsland Campus, Room 1E-127
Phone: 5122 6320
Email: t.meads@federation.edu.au

Qualifications

Doctor of Philosophy (Creative Writing) - Flinders University - 2015

Bachelor of Creative Industries (Honours I) (Creative Writing) - Queensland University of Technology - 2007

Certificate III Community Services - Swinburne University of Technology - 1998

Teaching

Programs

• Bachelor of Arts

Courses

• Introduction to Creative Writing (LITCR1001)
• Creative Writing - Digital Writing Genres (LITCR2104)
• Expository Writing (LITCR1002)

Biography

Threasa is a transdisciplinary practice-led researcher, the author of two liminal autobiographies, Nobody and Mothsong (Rare Bird Books, 2016), and a visual artist with a PhD in creative writing from Flinders University. Nobody was previously short-listed for The Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award in 2008 and awarded a Varuna Fellowship in 2009. In 2012 she was emerging writer in residence at the KSP Writers’ Centre. Her writing crosses genres and has been published in local and international journals including, apt, Still Point Arts Quarterly, LiNQ, Double Dialogues, and TEXT.

Awards

2012 Humanities Part-time Teaching Award Flinders University

2012 Copyright Agency Limited Bursary

2012 Fish Short Story Prize - Long-list

2011 Grace Marion Wilson Mentorship - Short-list

2011 Katharine Susannah Prichard Emerging Writer Residency

2010 RHD Project Grant Flinders University

2010 Travel Grant Flinders University

2009 EHLT Travel Bursary Flinders University

2009 Varuna Publisher Fellowship

2009 Academic Internship Flinders University

2009 EHLT Top-Up Scholarship Flinders University

2009 Australian Postgraduate Award (APA)

2008 The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award – Short-list

Areas of expertise

Threasa’s transdisciplinary, transpersonal practice-led research is driven by her passion for social justice, nurturing creative talent and inspiring excellence in creative and cultural production. She is currently developing Twine video games based on her first memoir, Nobody, and her PhD dissertation, Folded in on yourself in this way you become: A liminal autobiographical map of healing from child abuse.

Nobody is a highly stylised memoir that employs the choose-your-own-adventure structure to illustrate the complexity of navigating trauma for both author and reader. Nobody’s second-person narration and choose-your-own-adventure form work seamlessly together with word and image to powerfully convey the intimate exchange that the author had with her fragmented selves while writing, and reveals the claustrophobia and confusion of PTSD.

Her PhD dissertation was an intuitive, practice-led creative writing project which navigated, mapped, and interrogated the complex and shifting terrain of her ongoing journey of healing from child abuse. Interdisciplinary and transpersonal in its research focus, it engaged with key works to trace the lines of thought across the topic areas of trauma, ekphrasis, magical realism and life writing/creative non-fiction, and presented the findings in such a way as to show synthesis between both creative and critical modes of research practice, and offer a model of practice-led research.

In addition to developing video games, Threasa is writing a magical realist fiction novel that examines the complexity of rape culture, explores abject feminist visual art, and problematises a simplistic view of the therapeutic autobiographical act; researching cat memoirs; and working on a larger scale project investigating art, violence and transformation through the lens of generative anthropology and posthumanism.

Research interests

• Life Writing, Fiction, Creative Non-fiction, and Hybridity
• Narratology
• Post-classical and Cyber-narratology
• Game theory
• Digital Writing
• Foucault
• Barthes
• Magical Realism
• Ekphrasis
• Liminality
• PTSD and Post Traumatic Growth
• Post-postmodernism
• Heterotopias
• Feminisms
• Generative Anthropology
• Post humanism
• Practice-led, transpersonal, transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research methods

Supervision

Present doctoral students:

Sharyn Kaesehagen (Flinders) - "Trauma Flow and Resilience in Knit Lit" - Associate Supervisor

Publications

Books

Meads, T (2016) Nobody: A Liminal Autobiography. USA: Rare Bird Books, A Vireo Book.

Meads, T (2016) Mothsong: A Liminal Autobiography. USA: Rare Bird Books, A Vireo Book.

Refereed journal articles

Meads, T (2017) ‘We might as well call it a boat.’ TEXT Special Issue 39: The Essay, April [http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue39/Meads.pdf]

Meads, T (2010) ‘Intersections of Therapy and Aesthetics: Ekphrasis, Magic Realism, and Healing Child Abuse in Contemporary Autobiography.’ Double Dialogues, 3.

Other research details

Meads, T (2015) Folded in on yourself in this way you become: A liminal-autobiographical map of healing from child abuse. PhD. Flinders University.

Other selected publications

Memoir

Meads, T (2012) ‘Bad Fruit.’ LiNQ: Literature in North Queensland. Townsville: James Cook University, School of Humanities. 39(Performing Lives) pp. 18-23.

Lyric Essay

Meads, T (2016) ‘How to Map a Rainbow: a step-by-step guide.’ Still Point Arts Quarterly, Spring (21) pp. 74-87.

Personal Essay

Meads, T (2015) ‘Bright Orange Cowboy Boots.’ Apt Tenth Anniversary Issue, December [http://apt.aforementionedproductions.com/2015/12/bright-orange-cowboy-boots-by-threasa-meads/].

Short Fiction

Meads, T (2013) ‘The Wish.’ Flinders Indaily: Summer Edition, January 24.

Meads, T (2012) ‘Tink Wildly.’ Apt Literary Magazine, July. [http://apt.aforementionedproductions.com/2012/07/tink-wildly-by-threasa-meads/].

Associations

• Member, Latrobe Regional Gallery Advisory Committee
• Member, Baw Baw Writers’ Network
• Adjunct Researcher, School of Humanities and Creative Arts, Flinders University
• Member, Women’s Life Writing Network
• Member, IABA (International Auto/Biography Association)
• Member, IABA Asia-Pacific Chapter
• Member, Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP)